Thursday, 20 October 2016

Final Debate Confirms
Positions – strengths and weaknesses of Both Candidates: Trump Sets Stage for
Refusal to Accept Election Result if he Loses

The final US presidential debate confirmed what we already
knew about both candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. Donald Trump has no
experience of political office, speaks in vague and general terms on major
policy questions, is vulnerable on the question of women, and refused in
advance to accept election defeat, should that occur, because he claims the system
is “rigged”.

This last position confirms that he believes the electoral
systems of the several American states, many of them in Republicans’ hands, are
illegitimate despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This has never
before occurred in the history American presidential elections and indicates a
chasm deeper than the San Andreas fault between the two candidates, between the
Republican candidate and his own party, his own campaign team, major supporters
like Governor Chris Christie and his vice presidential running mate, Governor
Mike Pence.

But his core voters – drawn from a wide social base
extending deep into America’s affluent middle classes – will be encouraged to
stick with their candidate until the very end.

He also argued that as a “criminal”, Clinton should not even
be allowed to run for president. In the first debate he said that he would have
Hillary investigated and sent to jail for her crimes. He is setting the stage
for a declaration of a rigged, stolen election that illegally deprives him of
victory on 8 November. Should he stick with this line after what looks like
inevitable defeat on 8 November, he may well continue a campaign to undermine
the legitimacy of a Clinton presidency much as he tried to do with false claims
against President Obama that he was not born in the United States, a claim
believed by large swathes of the Republican electorate even today.

This unprecedented stance would place the US alongside
authoritarian states and dictatorships that routinely jail opponents, a
practice in many US allied nations that threatens to come home. But it will
delight his core support whose slogan is “Lock Her Up”.

Donald Trump also accused Hillary Clinton’s campaign of
causing violence at some of his election rallies and encouraging women to come
forward with false claims that the Republican had sexually molested them. “She
started the riot at my Chicago rally,” he stated. He flatly denied he’d ever
molested or groped any women and declared that he respects women more than any
other person alive. Trump’s world is beyond evidence, a self-contained reality.

Trump was stronger on his remarks about Iraq, on Libya and
Syria where he scored well for pointing out that President Assad, Russia and
Iran were actually fighting ISIS while the US backs ‘rebels’ whose loyalties
are suspect.

He also went on the offensive over the Clinton emails matter
and made legitimate points about the derailing of the FBI’s investigation. There
is a case to answer there which will be used by opponents like Trump to
challenge her leadership and block her presidential initiatives, especially if
the GOP retains a hold on the House of Representatives.

Trump called Hillary Clinton “a liar” on at least 4
occasions, and interrupted his opponent on numerous more occasions.

On another landmark issue in post-war American politics –
Roe vs Wade which made abortion legal – Trump stated he would appoint Supreme
Court justices to overturn the decision of 1973. Hillary Clinton’s stout
defence of the pro-choice position was both clear and hard-hitting – and will
further widen the rift between women voters and the Republican candidate.

Overall, Donald Trump’s debate performance was acceptable
but he did not secure a victory last night. Clinton has now won every debate
according to opinion polls that have a secure methodology, i.e., anything
approaching a representative sample of either debate-watchers or likely voters.
But the core support of each candidate will not have been affected by the third
and final contest between the candidates for the White House.

Clinton’s performance was, once again, measured, detailed on
policy, generally on point in regard to questions asked, and even witty on
occasion, as when she threw in a remark about the Chinese steel used by Trump
to build his Las Vegas hotel while he was plugging his various luxury assets.

On the economy, it was noteworthy that Trump agreed with
Chris Wallace, the Fox News debate host, when he said that Trump stood for
lower taxes and less government regulation, but the Republican’s response was
to argue that NATO countries should “pay up”, avoiding the question itself and economists
who criticise his tax reduction plans as likely to cause a massive increase in
the national debt. Clinton derided Trump tax plans as “trickle down economics
on steroids”.

Low taxes for the rich and less corporate regulation
contradicts the political attitudes of large parts of the GOP candidates
working class core support. It will remain to be seen if that makes any
difference to them on election day.

In their closing statements the contrast was stark and
confirms where each candidate stands rhetorically: while Clinton emphasised
jobs, diversity, fairness, taxing corporations, Trump spoke about a stronger
military, more empowered police forces, and twice in a minute repeated his
ambition to make America great again.

There remain in the region of 19% of American voters still
undecided on their choice of president. Polls over the next week will show if
anything in last night’s debate changed their minds. Hillary Clinton has a
strong lead at present nationally and in almost all key states but that large
figure of undecided voters means this election contest is going to the wire.

Americans will finally decide on what kind of country and
leader they want. Most are likely to vote negatively - against the candidate
they dislike most rather for than for one they truly admire.

American democracy has produced two of the most disliked
candidates for president in a century or more and however it goes on 8 November,
there will remain massive political discontent and disillusionment. Given the
poisonous atmosphere, the spectre of political violence hangs over the United
States. And if Clinton wins, as almost all polls predict, there is likely to be
a concerted right wing effort to declare her election illegitimate and to block
her legislative programme. This is the end point of post-truth politics where a
politician can say whatever they like regardless of the facts and maintain that
position despite evidence, and be believed by a significant proportion of the
electorate, regardless of level of income or education.

The paranoid style in American politics, documented long ago
by historian Richard Hofstadter, is alive and well and hard-wired in divisive
partisan politics.

In the 1990s, the Clintons spoke of a vast right wing
conspiracy against their leadership. They may have been half-right then, but
the power of the Right has exploded since then. President Clinton is going to
need a mobilised Democratic party, energised by the Bernie Sanders Millennials,
to stand any chance of sustaining her credibility as America’s first woman
chief executive and commander-in-chief.

Tuesday, 18 October 2016

Trump
and Gingrich talk of “rigged election” and “coup d’etat” is green light for
violent rejection of a Clinton victory

It has long been part of Donald Trump’s so-called
post-election defeat strategy to cry foul and declare the system rigged against
the self-declared people’s billionaire champion. Now, just ahead of the third
and final debate with Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, the former Republican
House speaker, Newt Gingrich has blamed the corporate media for a ‘coup d’etat’
against Trump who, Gingrich claims, would be leading by 15% were it not for
media bias. The latter is most apparent in the time devoted last week to the
video showing Trump boasting of sexually assaulting women as contrasted with
the scant attention to Wikileaked speeches by Hillary Clinton, Gingrich
suggests.

Post-truth politics rarely paid attention to reality
but a coup d’etat indicates a further slip into the Alice in Wonderland world
of the Trump roadshow. The ‘reality’ TV star candidate’s supporters are
desperately trying to rescue a campaign that’s been on the rocks since their
leader attacked a Gold Star family and has approached freefall since Trump was
exposed on television for boasting about his licence, as a TV star, to do
whatever he wished to women.

According to the encylopedia Britannica a coup d’etat
is “the sudden, violent overthrow
of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup
is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military
elements.” Not only has there been no violence against Donald Trump, he is yet
actually to win any political office, let alone be removed from it by military
coercion.

Newt Gingrich, who has
a doctorate in history, appears to need reminding that claims require
substantiation in terms of concrete evidence.

Asked if the election
is literally being “rigged” or “stolen” at local voting centres, Gingrich
replied that he was referring only to media bias in covering the Trump sex tape
as compared with the Clinton speeches exposed by Wikileaks. That still does not
explain Trump’s repeated calls at recent rallies urging his supporters to ‘monitor’
voting at their polling stations, including following “illegals” attempting to
vote.

The Trump campaign has begun
recruiting “election observers”. At a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump warned,
without evidence, of vote rigging: “We’re gonna watch
Pennsylvania,” he said. “Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make
sure other people don’t come in and vote five times. The only way we can
lose…..is if cheating goes on. I really believe it.

“So I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th
[November] – go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure
that it’s 100% fine,” he added.

Trump’s focus on Pennsylvania obliquely alludes to the fact that in over 50
voting districts – mainly in majority African-American localities - Republican
candidate Mitt Romney secured not a single vote in 2012. This was also the case
for Republican John McCain when he ran against Barack Obama in 2008. Obama
secured well over 90% of the total African-American vote in both election
victories.

Steve Webb, a Trump voter Ohio, declared he'd be an election monitor:
"I'll look for ... well, it's called racial profiling. Mexicans, Syrians
... people who can't speak American. I'm going to go right up behind them. I'll
do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I'm not going to
do anything illegal. I'm going to make them a little bit nervous."

A study by Loyola law school in 2014 demonstrated a mere 31 “credible” cases
of voter fraud from a total of 1 billion ballots cast.

It is the case however
that the Trump sexual assault boasts received several times more air time than
did the leaked emails concerning Clinton’s speeches to Wall St firms, knowledge
that a key US ally, Saudi Arabia, has been funding ISIS, among other things,
which certainly merits further investigation. But given that Trump made Bill
Clinton’s sexual adventures a campaign issue for Hillary, he would
automatically draw attention to any revelations of his own scandals, especially
ones so serious as normally to be considered illegal sexual assault.

In addition, Trump has
generally garnered far more TV airtime than any other candidate either in the
Republican primaries or in the presidential campaign. One survey showed Trump
receiving in excess of $2 billion free airtime in contrast to Clinton’s $700
million and Bernie Sanders’s pitiful $250m. Trump’s media strategy – to make
outsized claims to draw media attention and to keep the spotlight has finally
produced serious blowback and damaged his polling numbers.

But there is a bigger
issue at stake in the claims made on the Right about the likely defeat of their
champion – the leader who is making a last ditch stand against the satanic
forces of evil, as some evangelicals, birthers and alt-right extremists prepare
for Armageddon. This is no ordinary election for them but the showdown about
who owns and runs America.

The collection of white
supremacists, Christian evangelicals, and anti-globalists believe Trump when he
says the country is ‘going to hell’ because of the presidency of Barack Obama
and the prospect of Hillary Clinton as chief executive. They are preparing
either for an ‘end of days’ apocalypse or a race war to halt the inevitable –
an America which, in a few short decades, will feature whites as a minority of
the population.

Asked repeatedly during
the first presidential debate whether he would concede to Clinton if he failed
to secure the presidency, Trump reluctantly concurred but later toyed with
rejecting a Clinton victory. While there is no rule stating that the losing
contender must graciously concede, given the vitriolic character of Trump’s
campaign, and the complete rejection of the legitimacy of his opponent and of
the very electoral system, there could well be a violent reaction from a
minority of the millions of voters – many of them gun owners and second
amendment diehards – Trump has rallied with his fiery message.

A Survey Monkey poll
suggests that around 30% of Trump voters would reject a Clinton victory as
illegitimate, with just under a third saying they would accept it.

Trump’s message has
been a long time in the making, however, and seems to be the logical development
of trends deep in post-1960s Republican and Democratic party politics. The
apocalyptic calls from southern segregationists against civil rights, President
Nixon’s thinly veiled racist calls for law and order and espousal of a racist ‘southern
strategy’, the FBI’s war on civil rights and black power, Ronald Reagan’s
championing of coded racist ‘states rights’ at a rally at Philadelphia,
Mississippi – the scene in 1964 of the killing of 3 civil rights activists –
and the marrying of religion and politics in a new cold war against the ‘evil
empire’ built a platform for Trump.

And in the 1990s, with
the victory of Bill Clinton, the anti-globalists and puritanical purists felt
the forces of UN and NAFTA darkness, led by Newt Gingrich’s
counter-revolutionary ‘contract with America’, and the general slide into the
rejection of the Clinton and Democrats, and their ethnically- and
racially-diverse coalition, as legitimate actors on the political scene.

Mainstream party
politics, dominated by Big Money, and championing low taxes for the rich and
small government for the working and middle classes, created the foundations of
both of this election cycle’s insurgencies – led by Donald Trump and Bernie
Sanders. Both leaders claim the system is rigged against ordinary people and
call for a revolution.

But the anger and
bitterness is almost exclusively the domain of the Trump campaign, whose white
ethno-nationalist base seems to want a final showdown to win ‘their country’
back.

Inderjeet Parmar is
professor of international politics at City, University of London, and a
columnist at The Wire

Thursday, 13 October 2016

In the September 2012 edition of Political Insight, I wrote an article on the political decay of the two main American political parties and their disconnection with the lives and anxieties of ordinary people.

The opening paragraph of that article is pasted below and shows that the 2016 election process, and the sheer vitriol, anger and resentment, and deep ideological divides it has made apparent, has been coming for some time, has gathered real momentum and is unlikely to fizzle out any time soon; more likely, there is a political explosion on the cards unless the next president fashions a new political bargain at home and abroad - one that focuses on redistribution income, wealth and power away from Wall St, and reduce US global military, financial and political commitments overseas.

"There are many issues in the 2012 US presidential election campaign that are central to understanding US politics generally and US power today, such as money, national security and religion.

The US may be suffering from high unemployment levels, spiralling home repossessions and increased wealth and income inequality, yet the politics of the world's lone superpower seem almost entirely removed from the lives of the mass of ordinary working Americans. On the face of it, the US appears to have fully embraced ‘post-truth politics’, a condition in which practically anything may be said and taken seriously about almost any subject regardless of its connection with reality.

The leadership groups of both the Republican and Democratic parties are implicated in a politics seemingly disconnected from reality. They are both more or less equally committed to a politics dominated by Big Finance rather than popular sovereignty; to an economic philosophy obsessed with the market mechanism, regardless of its utility to the broad mass of Americans; and to a foreign and national security perspective more suited to the interests of a global imperium than its own, let alone the world's, people.

Both parties are heavily invested in the Lincolnian belief that the US is ‘the last best hope of earth’."

The main thing that we learned
or, rather, we were reminded of, from the second debate is that this is truly
an extraordinary election, and the outcome is going to be very significant
going into the next decade or more. There are two forces up against each other
– the status quo, represented by Democratic Hillary Clinton, who symbolises the
political establishment, against the Republican Donald Trump, who argues that
he is a change candidate. The race started off with an extraordinary primary
season, where Hillary Clinton defeated the ‘socialist’ Bernie Sanders after he
secured over 13 million votes in the Democratic primaries; the debating season
is matching this that unprecedented character.

The (most recent) strategy
that Trump has been employing is to try to win back those Republican voters
turned off by his overall image of xenophobia and misogyny. I do not believe
that there was enough in the second debate, other than his denial on the
question of the video tape released on Friday, to win them over. Overall, he is
believed to have failed to win back ground from Clinton, who held her own in
the debate, even when Trump raised allegations of sexual abuse relating to her
husband for which she could hardly be held responsible.

Hillary Clinton maintained a
relatively dignified approach to the entire debate, which had a very personal
nature. Donald Trump used the tactics he is normally associated with, which
often lower the level of civility, by saying that she had “hate in her heart”
and that she has tolerated abuse. The important point to make here, though, is
that this kind of political gossip is an opium of the American electorate, and
the cult of celebrity and interest in stardom means these debate exchanges are
lapped up every four years.

Yet, Trump hit home with
several points that show why this race is as close as it is: Clinton's place
and role as an establishment politician, with powerful links with the past and
with Big Money, the disasters of the Iraq war and of the financial meltdown of
2008-09, of the chaos in post-US intervention for regime change in Libya. Trump
also scored with criticism of Clinton's private email server as secretary of
state and with the Wikileaked transcripts of Clinton's espousal of sympathy with
Wall St and on the efficacy of maintaining public and private positions on key
political questions, and her sympathy for a policy she has publicly repudiated
- the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Hillary Clinton's credibility,
level of public trust and disapproval is only slightly higher than the same for
Donald Trump.

But that should not deflect
from the other main problem at the moment, and that is that Donald
Trump stands for a reversal of the historic 1960s and 1970s rights
revolution, where women and African Americans and many other minorities won
rights. What he stands for is really a reversion to the 1950s – he’s a person
who appears to wish that the civil rights movement and the women’s rights
movement had never happened.

The election of Barack Obama
for the first time in 2008, and now the prospect of a woman president in 2016,
has really sent a signal to a lot of people who are very deeply conservative,
who opposed the rights revolution from the very beginning, and have chipped
away at those gains ever since. The level of vitriol against those changes
and the effect that they are now having in the twenty-first century, has
reached such a high point that Trump is able to sustain support despite
everything he’s said and done.

Trump continues to garner
support at between 40 and 42 per cent in opinion polls, which appears at odds
with everything we know about his businesses, his taxes and his attitudes
towards women and racial minorities. On the other hand, it must be remembered that his popularity still
puts him near the lower end of support achieved in previous election campaigns.
We could see something similar to Republican contender Barry Goldwater’s
spectacular defeat when, in 1964, he was thoroughly trounced in the electoral
college, resulting in a landslide victory to Lyndon Johnson.

It is said of Barry Goldwater
that he lost the election but won the future – a victory that resonates with
the anti-rights appeals of Donald Trump. But 2016 is not 1964 and the
demographic future of America is against the Trump tide. When national opinion polls are translated into electoral
college votes in the key swing states, it will probably be a handsome victory
for Hillary Clinton, leaving a Trump rump that will maintain that the election
process was rigged all along, that his defeat resulted from betrayal by the GOP's leadership.

Sunday, 9 October 2016

Clinton heads into
second presidential debate ahead in the polls, Trump campaign in crisis (again)

Donald Trump enters the second presidential election debate
behind by at least 4% in the polls – he was neck and neck ahead of the first
debate – under pressure to perform better and win back the initiative. This
translates, due to Clinton’s lead in the majority of key ‘swing states’, into a
resounding defeat in electoral college terms in November. Yet, given the
volatility of the electorate, the outcome remains uncertain due to the
possibility of a ‘secret’ Trump voting bloc who conceal their support of Trump
from pollsters.

But the recently released video tape showing him boasting of
how his celebrity status enables him to sexually assault women is likely to put
him on the back foot with undecided voters who constitute around 20% of the
electorate in this most controversial of contests.

Those undecided voters will form the studio audience at the
second debate scheduled for tonight (Sunday 9 October). Half of all questions
directed at the candidates will be from audience members; both candidates will
need to be nimble on their political feet to cope with questions that might
range from what they’re going to do to restore living standards or about the
banks that brought America to its knees in 2008 to the price of a pound of
beef.

Most of them will not like hearing that their possible
future president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces – in which sexual
violence is a major problem - supports sexual assaults on women. Several senior
Republicans have now refused to endorse Trump’s candidacy but the party has not
yet seen enough to warrant a full-scale repudiation. This could cause the GOP
severe credibility problems down the line.

The most recent video of Trump’s predatory view of women,
when seen in the context of previous comments, constitutes a world view – that women
who work in executive positions are unwelcome, and he is angered if, upon
arriving home in the evening, his meal is not ready. He appears to want
American women to return to the oppressive 1950s before the women’s rights
movement.

Trump declared himself the winner of the first debate but
was seen as clearly unprepared by commentators including Republican political
strategists. He appeared to have secured an advantage from the vice
presidential debate which his running mate, Mike Pence, was thought by many to
have won – mainly by denying that Trump had ever said anything racist, sexist
or otherwise abusive, a position contrary to Trump’s actual record. But in this
post-truth politics age, this contradiction hardly appears worthy of comment in
a tribalised media that spew their own views as the truth. Yet, even Pence has
distanced himself from the toxic comments about women and girls that Trump
first made in 2005.

While Trump alienates voters, Clinton is chasing and
gradually winning over Millennials who despite supporting her by a margin of at
least 2 to 1 are unenthusiastic about the Democratic candidate; only 47% say
that they’ll definitely vote in November. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s primary
election nemesis, who provided the lenses through which most Millennials view
Clinton, is roving the country to galvanise their votes while Clinton
increasingly speaks about college fees and climate change, issues that appeal
to the under 35s.

The second debate is likely to see an under-siege but better
prepared Donald Trump, probably one likely to rove around the stage – there are
no lecterns this time to stand behind and grip with both hands. He will need to
retain self-control lest he appears intimidating, reinforcing his image as a
male bully who has little if any respect for women.

Billing himself as the change candidate, the change Donald
Trump believes in seems to lie somewhere in the 1950s.

But the big question posed by this election remains
unchanged: how has America come to this point? That a candidate like Donald
Trump has a serious shot at the White House, has not been repudiated by the
Republican party, and has yet to be decisively knocked out of the race by an
experienced representative of the political class?

It suggests that the crisis of the American political
establishment is deep and enduring. This story is far from over, regardless of
the outcome at tonight’s debate let alone on 8 November 2016.